by Gene DeWeese
Finally, after a second twenty-minute session with the first of the three aliens, Kirk called a halt to the increasingly frustrating operation and turned to Dr. McCoy. "Now that they're stable—they are stable, aren't they, Bones?"
"They seem to be, yes, but I can't guarantee they don't still have a few surprises for us."
"Understood. That will have to be good enough." Kirk turned to Lieutenant Tomson of security. "Lieutenant, release the straps on this one. Let's see what he does."
While Creighton and Reems held their phasers at the ready, Tomson released the straps, the alien's eyes following her every motion. For a few seconds after the straps retracted invisibly into the surface of the table, the alien remained motionless. Then, moving tentatively, he sat up straighter and turned and slid off the table, holding onto its edge as his booted feet settled on the floor. Releasing the table, he swayed unsteadily, as if he couldn't quite keep his balance. All the while, though, his eyes moved about the group, pausing on the pair of phasers in the guards' hands, obviously assessing them as weapons.
"Escort him to one of our detention cells," Kirk said. "Then take the other two and put them in the same cell. Perhaps, with none of us around, they'll talk to each other."
"Yes, sir," Tomson replied. "Creighton," she said, motioning the ensign forward. He reached out and took the alien's arm, firmly but not harshly.
The alien didn't resist. His eyes went briefly to the hand on his arm, and, when Creighton urged him forward, he moved.
Until they drew abreast of Captain Kirk.
Without warning, without even a premonitory flicker of his eyes, the alien tore loose from Creighton's grip and threw himself at Kirk, who barely had time to half raise his arms before the alien had slammed into his shoulder, spinning him around. A fraction of a second later, the alien's short but powerful arm was reaching up and around Kirk's neck from behind, bringing the forearm up under Kirk's chin with a force that in another second would snap his neck.
Chapter Eight
IT WAS ONLY the phasers of the two security guards that saved Kirk, both beams catching the alien squarely. One, however, also caught Kirk in its periphery, sending him reeling to the edge of unconsciousness himself. An instant later, Tomson was pulling the now limp form of the alien from Kirk while McCoy and Spock both gripped Kirk's arms to support him until he could steady himself.
"Jim! Are you all right?" McCoy's gravelly voice was tense in Kirk's ear.
After a second, Kirk nodded. "A little shaky from the phaser, but that's all. Which is, as they say, vastly preferable to the alternative," he went on, still a little unsteady on his feet as he turned to the two security guards. "Thank you, Lieutenant Tomson, Ensign Reems, for your prompt action.
Kirk looked at the alien then, its stocky body now slumped to the floor. "Get this one to the detention cell," he said, pausing a second to blink away yet another brief wave of dizziness from the phaser. "Then put one of the others—just one, the taller one, not both—in with him. We'll watch and listen and hope something develops. Use your largest cell, and see what can be done about making it look less like a cell before they wake up again."
Tomson nodded, and, with Creighton and Reems, picked the alien up and carried him out.
"One thing for sure," McCoy said as the door slid shut behind the security guards and the alien, "they aren't stupid. That one's been listening even if he can't understand the language, and he's already figured out who the boss is."
Kirk nodded ruefully. "So he'd know who to try to kill first."
"You have to start somewhere," Crandall offered, "and it was a form of communication."
At first, Kirk took the words to be Crandall's first modest attempt at humor in all the weeks since he had boarded the Enterprise, but a look at the man's deadly earnest expression quickly persuaded him otherwise.
By the time the two aliens were installed in their barless detention cell, it resembled a small stateroom more than a cell. Kirk doubted that the comparatively pleasant surroundings would impress the aliens to any noticeable extent, but, as he had told the chief of security who had supervised the hasty redecoration of the cell, it couldn't hurt.
The taller alien was the first to awaken from his phaser-induced unconsciousness, and he began once again to tremble even before he opened his eyes. But then, when his eyes twitched open and he saw his companion stretched out on a second narrow cot on the opposite side of the disguised cell, the trembling stopped abruptly, and he lay rigidly still for several seconds, as if trying to gain full control of himself.
Briefly, then, he poked at his deactivated tooth, first with his tongue and then, more forcefully, with his finger. Even as he checked his own tooth, however, he moved to the other cot and just as quickly checked his companion's tooth. When he saw that its implant, too, had been removed, he slumped momentarily but then straightened himself, moved stiffly back to his own cot, and sat down to wait.
After another minute, as if acting on an afterthought, he stood and tried the door and made his way slowly around the tiny room, closely inspecting the walls, then peering up at the translucent ceiling through which the room's only light was provided. Finally, apparently satisfied there was nothing else he could do, he sat down once again to wait.
Five minutes later, the other alien awakened. Like the first, he checked his tooth almost immediately.
And that was the last thing either of them did for more than twelve hours. When food, which McCoy's metabolic analysis of the aliens had enabled the computerized galley to synthesize, was brought in, they both ignored it.
Watching them on a screen in the wardroom, Kirk did not seem surprised. "If they can't kill themselves any other way, they'll starve themselves to death," he said with a sigh to Dr. McCoy, who was watching with him. "They'd probably try to strangle each other except they know we'd stop them. What about intravenous? Can you whip up something that will keep them going in spite of themselves?"
McCoy nodded. "Probably, but I don't think it's going to get us anywhere. These are very stubborn people, Jim, even more stubborn than your average starship commander."
"Have some prepared anyway," Kirk said. Then he added, with a quick grin, "And thanks for the encouragement. If you'd said they were more stubborn than your average ship's doctor, I might've given up hope altogether."
For a long time, then, Kirk sat alone watching the two, almost as silent and motionless as the aliens themselves. He had hoped that, left alone with each other, they would talk enough for the combined capabilities of the universal translator and the computer to come up with a first pass at their language, enough for at least the beginnings of communication, but that obviously was not going to happen. Even the translators, with their ability to analyze a subject's neuronic activity, required some spoken words to work with, some sounds to match with the neuronic patterns. These beings were apparently not only fanatically determined to kill themselves while doing the most possible damage to their supposed enemy in the process. They were also fanatically stoic and patient once they had recovered from the initial shock of learning they couldn't kill themselves. They were simply determined to have no meaningful contact with the enemy. They were, he realized more forcefully with each passing minute, the ultimate embodiment of the "name, rank, and serial number" philosophy. As long as they thought the Enterprise was the enemy—
Abruptly, he stood up. "Lieutenant Tomson," he said, speaking into the wardroom intercom, "Kirk here. Bring three guards and meet me ASAP at the aliens' cells. We're going to give them a tour of the Enterprise."
Restrained only by padded wrist manacles that fastened the three together and by the prominently displayed phasers of the security team, the aliens were escorted first to the engineering deck. From the moment the three emerged suspiciously from their cells, Kirk kept up a running commentary on everything they passed through or by. During the first moments of the tour, as the seemingly endless corridors they were led through began to give them some small appreciation of
the true vastness of the Enterprise, they allowed some emotion to show on their faces, but by the time they reached the turbolift, their faces were once again the expressionless blanks they had maintained for the past dozen hours in their cells.
As they were urged from the turbolift on the main engineering deck, the group was met by Chief Engineer Scott, who, after an initial skeptical glance at Kirk, took the three on basically the same tour that his assistant had taken Crandall on during his first days on board. Predictably, they remained stone-faced throughout, barely deigning even to turn their eyes in the direction of the control consoles, the repair shops, or even the impulse power units, even though Kirk was positive that all three were meticulously recording each and every detail somewhere inside their hairless skulls.
Only once did they lose some small measure of their composure, and that was when, in the remote-scanning monitor room, they were suddenly confronted with the brilliantly vivid image of the dilithium-focused, antimatter heart of the Enterprise. Even then, no sound came from their almost lipless mouths. Only their eyes widened, and the tallest of the three twitched backward involuntarily from the inferno on the huge screen. Within another second, however, the impassivity was restored to their features, and it was as if the mind-boggling release of power they were observing was nothing more than an oversized candle flame.
An hour later, with no further cracks having appeared even momentarily in their facade of indifference, the three were escorted onto the bridge. As it had everywhere the aliens were taken, the overall lighting had been reduced to a level McCoy had estimated would be tolerable to them.
Even though the three appeared as impassive as ever, two of them half stumbled when the security detail urged them down the steps and closer to the main viewscreen, where the computer-generated images of the stars were every bit as real and probably twice as vivid as anything the aliens had ever seen, even at sublight. The four alien craft, still being tracked, were nonluminous dots, one in each quadrant of the screen.
"Mr. Spock," Kirk said, "is our little show-and-tell ready to roll?"
"Of course, Captain."
"Very well. Let's get the show on the road."
With only the slightest arch of his eyebrow at Kirk's choice of words, Spock turned back to the science station. "Computer," he said, "begin."
Immediately, the real-time image on the viewscreen was replaced by another, this one also computer-generated but totally different from the star field it replaced.
The new image was a view of the interior of the bridge itself, including all bridge personnel and the aliens themselves, standing exactly where they were actually standing, moving as they moved.
After a few seconds, the viewpoint from which the image was seen began to shift, rising from a point above the viewscreen toward the upper bulkhead. But it didn't stop there. Slowly, it continued to rise until it had passed through the bulkhead, itself appearing as if part of a blueprint transparency, leaving the interior of the bridge still visible beyond it. The structural members and the miles of cables running between the multiple layers of the bulkhead directly above the bridge were visible and yet did not obscure the bridge itself and the people inside.
And still the viewpoint continued to rise, until finally the entire hundred-and-thirty-meter saucer that was the primary hull was included on the screen, the transparent "cutaway" area above the bridge now only a tiny circle in the center, the people inside little more than dots.
Then, as the viewpoint continued to rise even higher above the Enterprise, the transparent cutaway section opaqued, becoming just another segment of the gleaming metal of the hull. After another full minute, the entire ship, including primary and secondary hulls and the massive warp-drive units, was on the screen. For yet another minute, the viewpoint lingered there, giving the aliens sufficient time to fully appreciate the size of the vessel, and for a moment Kirk wondered if the computer were going to superimpose an image of one of the relatively tiny alien vessels for comparison.
But Spock and the computer had come up with nothing that simple.
Again, the viewpoint began to move, this time swooping gracefully down toward a spot on the primary hull immediately above the bridge. Instead of continuing through the bulkhead and into the bridge, however, it slowed and stopped and oriented itself to look forward, directly over the hull, the upper skin of which remained massively visible across the bottom of the screen.
That was when what Kirk remembered as real images began to appear, selected excerpts from the computer's records of what had happened to the Enterprise since it had first appeared in this sector of space. One after another, the scenes were seamlessly woven together and superimposed above the ever-present image of the hull. The only episode of interest that was omitted was the brief and frustrating investigation of the planet that had, far below its radiation-soaked surface, given readings indicating both a functional antimatter power source and a form of life that not even Spock had been able to classify.
The aliens remained impassive, even at the repeated scenes of planetwide destruction, but when the image of the first ship appeared, they stiffened. And when the ship attacked, its lasers slicing through the intervening space, they could not keep from flinching, nor could they keep their faces totally expressionless as the laser beams flared harmlessly but spectacularly against the Enterprise's shields, leaving the ship itself untouched.
And so it went, until the re-creation of those few deadly seconds when the three ships had been destroyed. Then, as the two ships in the attacking group were shown struck and disabled, the three aliens for the first time turned their eyes briefly toward each other. They were, Kirk was sure, grimly congratulating each other on having taken two of the enemy with them.
Then, as the illusory Enterprise on the screen shot forward at warp eight, the aliens turned abruptly back to the screen, unable any longer to maintain their pretended indifference. Watching closely now, they saw the Enterprise drop out of warp drive even more quickly than their own ships were capable of doing.
As the Enterprise came almost to a standstill only kilometers from the alien ship, a ghostly beam, obviously not a laser, stabbed out from the Enterprise, touching and penetrating the alien vessel. At the same time, the viewpoint of the image darted along the beam, halting a bare hundred meters outside the scorched and fused surface of the alien vessel. In another second, the massive thickness of the vessel's hull faded, just as that of the Enterprise had done at the start of the display. Here, though, there were no blueprintlike details, only an indistinct grayness, in the center of which appeared the tiny crew compartment, the only internal structure for which the sensors had determined a true size and shape in the seconds the Enterprise had been within detailed scanning range. Inside one of the crew compartments, indistinct images of four aliens appeared, floating unconscious in their now gravitationless environment. In another compartment, its walls scorched, were the sparse remains of the other two.
For several seconds, then, the ghostly beam—apparently the computer's imagined representation of the transporter beams—rested on both compartments. Finally, the beam shrank and focused on the four aliens who remained alive, its illusory substance splitting into four beams, each solidifying around one of the surviving aliens and, a moment later, magically lifting them out of the ship to hang in empty space, seemingly protected only by the beams themselves.
As quickly as it had in reality, the Enterprise shot away, rainbowing into warp drive in seconds, taking the aliens with it. Behind it, the three ships blossomed once again into miniature novas.
Finally, with the Enterprise tracking the four surviving ships, the computer's representations of the rescued aliens were shown being drawn in toward the Enterprise, making the imaginary transporter beams look even more like visible manifestations of tractor beams than they had before.
From that point on, the screen showed the aliens the computer's record of precisely what had happened to them once they were on board—how their comra
de had destroyed himself and nearly destroyed Nurse Garcia's arm, how the remaining three had been returned one at a time and kept unconscious while they were examined, and, finally, how the transmitters had been removed from their teeth. The show ended when the first of the three was allowed to awaken.
"Very impressive," Kirk said when the last image vanished and was replaced by a real-time view of the super-dense star field around them, including the four dots that were the remaining alien ships.
Looking at the aliens once again, Kirk was surprised to see that something bearing a suspicious resemblance to a tear was emerging from the eyes of the one on the end. More and more human, he thought. And less and less the total automatons they appear to be forcing themselves to be.
A moment later, as if to confirm Kirk's speculation, the alien who seemed to be crying suddenly spun about to face the other two as well as he could with the manacles still attaching his right hand to the left of the one next to him.
And he spoke, the first intentional sounds uttered by any of the three since they had been beamed on board.
The voice was harsh and keening but with a singsong quality that reminded Kirk of the tonal inflections of some Terran Oriental tongues. The alien in the middle, the tallest of the three and the one who had come closest to losing control when he had first been awakened, barked a single syllable and brought his right hand up in an obvious gesture for silence, though it was robbed of some of its effectiveness by the manacle that linked the hand to that of his comrade on his right.